Slow Progress Better than No Progress

I don't know about you but the concept of 'slow' is a real irritant for me. I've grown accustomed to fast-paced city life. I grew up in a rural farming community and, believe me, I know the concept of slow. There is nothing more frustrating than being caught behind a crawling tractor with a wide-load combine taking up most of the space on a rural road when you are running late for an English exam! When I moved to the city I was at first overwhelmed by how fast things sped by - both highway and people! The stereotype of rushing here and there, get 'er done yesterday, no time to waste really is a part of city life. Especially city life with 3 kids, full-time job, dog, and home renovation to contend with! But I adapted - even welcomed - that faster pace.

When I began the journey into book publishing people warned me how slow it could be at times and it's very true - and very frustrating. Weirdly, lately things in this business seem to be changing at the speed of light (e.g. self-publishing, agents getting into that part of the business, etc). But everyone still agrees that publishing slows down over the summer. For once, I'm glad there is slowness. I'll tell you why.

Per my blog post last week, I have a few goals to meet over the summer. And every one of them seems to be going slower than my never-ending house renovation (publishing isn't the only slow business, people. Construction - especially on my house! - is SLOW.) I've only been trying to lose ten pounds for one week and I only managed to lose 2. I wanted to revise a chunk of my wip and I only got through 4 chapters. I wanted to clear out the mess of paper in my office and I only got through one pile. I wanted to organize the stuff in my house for a yard sale and haven't come close. I wanted to get my wonky back straightened out and it's still wonky.

But slow progress is still better than nothing. Going slow has its benefits (as all those proponents of slow cooking will tell you). Losing weight slowly tends to stay off longer. Four chapters of revision is a start and there is no way a quick revision helps a book become better. One pile of paper is one less to go through. And those other two projects - well, a back is a complicated thing and miracles take time. A shot of cortizone is not going to help me in the long run. The yard sale organizing … well, I just have no excuse for that (beyond the fact I hate going through stuff and would just as soon send all of it to Goodwill. I may still end up doing that.)

My point (and I do have one) is that sometimes it's better to take things slowly - especially when that thing is important to you. The care with which we undertake to do something always shows up in the final product. There is a time and place for speed, certainly. But if something matters to you, taking the time to do it right is a hundred times better than a quick fix, get it off my desk, approach. Inevitably, those quick fixes break faster and you'll just have to re-do them later.

So, count this writer as one who is thankful that summertime is slow. The livin' may not exactly be easy but the pressure cooker doesn't need to be on when it's this hot outside!

One Story At a Time

I, like most mothers, are Grand Masters of Multi-tasking. I can plan a grocery list in my head, while driving my son to hockey practice, stopping to drop off dry cleaning and work on stubborn novel plot points all at the same time. This talent (or maybe not a talent but an essential survival skill in today's world) is not something I trained for or even thought I needed to have before I had children. Maybe it's a latent gene that turns on when you give birth. Suddenly you become a multi-tasker. Then again, maybe it's just a woman thing. Lord knows I despair of seeing it develop in my dearly loved son. My husband seems to be a great multi-tasker at work but when it comes to home life, uh, well, he tries. My point is, if this is something that I've developed to survive in my day to day life (or it's a genetic twist that a large percentage of women have) it seems to have by-passed me in terms of my ability to work on more than one story idea at a time.

I am a one draft at a time, one story at a time writer. I am amazed when I hear of other writers who can flip from working on their middle grade WIP to dip into a picture book draft and then, if they're stalled in these endeavors (or because they really are amazing multi-taskers), start drafting that YA novel they've had brewing in the back of their mind for a few weeks. I know I am not mentally or physically capable of stopping and starting three or more different projects with different voices, different plots, themes, tones and maintain the focus required to reach conclusion on any one of these projects. Ack. I get stressed just thinking about it. Even when I received my revision notes for Illegally Blonde, a story that was pretty much complete, I had to stop working on my WIP at the time to fully focus on Lucy's voice, Lucy's story and submerge myself into the story completely so that the revisions didn't have a different tone. That was my one big worry about the editorial revisions on IB. Because they came so many years after I'd completed the story, would I be able to get back into that 'voice'. So that's why I dropped the WIP I was working on at the time for a full month while I tackled the revisions. I didn't feel confident enough that switching from one story to another would benefit either of them very much. Yet I know many writers who can do this.

Is this writerly multi-tasking ability something that you can develop? Is it just a personal quirk? I'm genuinely curious even though I don't think I'll ever change my one story at a time method. I guess with my personal life already filled to overflowing with multiple tasks, I kind of enjoy just focussing on one thing at a time for a change. How about you? Are you a multi-tasker or one story at a time writer?

One Box at a Time

No, this is not a blog post about some TLC program on how to pack and organize your house. Okay, well, besides the TLC part, it is about packing and organizing your house but it's also about how going through that horrible process can teach you a few things about writing.

Many of you know that I'm in the process of packing up an entire house for our move in September. The last time I moved was over ten years ago and I still have the herniated disc to show for it. But physical impact aside, a move of this size is huge people. Do you have any idea how much stuff a family of five and a hundred pound dog can accumulate in ten years??? And why do we need to keep every single hockey jersey my son has worn in the last five years??? Seriously, it's enough to daunt the most organized of people into paralysis and I'm not the most organized of people by a long shot. While I can plan like a five star general about to invade a country for some things (think vacation planning), going through every item in a two storey house and either packing it for storage, packing it to move to the rental, throwing it away or taking it to the Goodwill is an exhausting, mind-numbing process. Pretty soon you start to make snap judgements without thinking just because you want to get it over with. "Who needs that brass candlestick I paid $200 for seven years ago? I don't like brass anymore. Goodwill." "Do I really need those suit jackets? How many conferences for work do I attend where I wear suits anymore? Goodwill." "The Boy will never miss this Bumblebee Transformer. It's practically broken anyway. Trash."

Pretty soon I'll have emptied out an entire house and the inevitable will happen: I'll redecorate and remember that the candlestick I blithely gave away would have looked perfect on that new table. I'll suddenly have a slew of meetings and won't have a thing to wear to them. My son will sob when he's looking for that favourite transformer and it's gone forever. Sigh. You see what I mean about paralysis. It's enough to make you want to sit in the middle of a half-packed room and cry.

But decisions have to be made and lived with if you are going to move forward with your life. Knowing this tendency of mine to go straight to being overwhelmed before I even start making decisions I have trained myself to think: "One room at a time. One box at a time. One item at a time." I can't tell you how that mantra has saved my sanity over the last few weeks.

So, what does this have to do with writing, you ask?

Well, when you start writing a book it seems like a huge mountainous task that would be impossible to complete. But, just like organizing a move, a little thought and preparation can help you break free of the paralysis. For example, think when you're preparing to write a book

One room at a time means Chapters: What does this one chapter have in it? What places and people are there to be organized?

One box at a time means Characters: Who is your main character? Who are their friends? What are the things that are most important to those characters that must go into that box?

One item at a time means Plot/Goal: What single most important thing does your main character want in this chapter? Keep that one item (your character's core goal) safe and secure and treasured. All the other stuff you can trash or donate (set it aside in another Word document if you don't want to let it go right away) But make sure you keep that one item safe and always know exactly where and what it is.

In this way, using this mantra, you can work through the house that is your book keeping the most important things and not worrying about what you've donated or trashed. One chapter - i.e. one room - at a time. Before you know it you'll have filled an entire house of rooms with neatly packed boxes.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go pack another box.